I had the great honor of speaking at the Majlis Mohamed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi, on the grounds of the Grand Mosque on The Future of Finance in the Age of Intelligence. In attendance was His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. Thank you to my family and the teams from Majlis Mohamed Bin Zayed, @provokemgmt, @StreamEvergreen and @FinancialBrand for the ongoing support. youtu.be/Q6Uaq24dxuA?si=GJw4…

Most account opening is designed to control risk. Very little of it is designed to measure what that control costs us. One credit union stopped asking every applicant for an identity document up front and asked for it only when a risk signal warranted it. Completion went from 5% to more than 60%. Same technology. Same regulatory environment. Those figures come from Frida Lebowitz, CEO of Debbie, on Banking Transformed. That gap was always there. It just never showed up on a report. We know what acquisition costs. We know what fraud costs. We don't know what unnecessary friction costs. So we keep optimizing the two numbers we can see, and we keep paying the one we cannot. 💡 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐦 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐮𝐦 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. 𝐈𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. ❓ What would your completion rate look like if you only asked for that document when something actually warranted it? 📌 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝: thefinancialbrand.com/news/b…

James Clear wrote that every action you take is a vote for the kind of person you want to become. The same is true of institutions. Every seemingly small decision a bank makes is a vote for the kind of bank it is becoming. Nobody loses to a challenger in one dramatic moment. The challenger gets 1% better at onboarding every day for two years. Your bank holds three meetings about it. That is the compounding gap. Invisible while it forms, painful once it lands in your numbers. Most banks already know what needs to be done. Our research shows it, time and again. What repeats is not the insight. It is the routine around it. The same meetings, the same approvals, the same priorities, the same results. 💡 Until the daily habits underneath the strategy shift, your strategy will keep looking more ambitious than your results. Agentic AI does not fix that. It accelerates whatever direction your habits are already pointing. ❓ What did your bank vote for this week?

Bank of America removed the $20,000 balance requirement from its checking rewards program, and 30 million checking customers became eligible overnight. More than 5 million have enrolled. Roughly 20,000 new-to-bank customers now open a checking account and join each week, 2.5 times the rate before the program launched. Good numbers. Also the easy ones. Shikha Narula, Head of Consumer Deposits and Rewards at Bank of America, said on a recent episode of Banking Transformed that opening the app is not the measure. A customer has to activate a deal and receive cash back. Activity is not necessarily engagement. The signals she watches sit further down: direct deposits moving to the bank, card transactions rising, a top-of-wallet card coming across from another institution. If the objective is deeper relationships, enrollment alone is a weak endpoint. The point for the rest of us is not to copy Bank of America's numbers. It is to connect the behavior a loyalty strategy is meant to influence with the measures used to judge it. Deposit behavior, payments, card usage, product adoption, investment balances. Those tell you whether the relationship changed. ❓ What is your loyalty program measured on? 📌 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: thefinancialbrand.com/news/c…

For years, most financial institutions treated artificial intelligence as an internal IT experiment meant for back-office efficiency. On this episode of Banking Transformed, I sat down with Fidel Vargas, CIO of @Bancolombia, to discuss why they shifted their AI strategy two years ago to put generative and agentic AI directly in front of customers. Instead of hiding AI behind internal processes, Bancolombia brought it to the front lines to better understand customer needs, provide more accurate responses, and anticipate personalized next-best actions. By deploying GenAI directly into customer interactions, they successfully reduced their contact center budget by more than 20 percent. 💡 AI is no longer a technology experiment; it is a core operational capability. ❓ How is your institution transitioning AI projects from internal IT experiments into customer-facing value drivers? 📌 Watch this episode of Banking Transformed: youtu.be/pDzZ5LWAbfM

Published with @Vericast: Each finding in our 2026 State of Financial Marketing research is defensible alone. Together, they show an industry upgrading language faster than its plumbing. 💡 𝐊𝐞𝐲 𝐠𝐚𝐩: We fund content production at 44% and data at 20%. 💡 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐲: 1. Fix the data sequence before adding another tool, since decisioning capability, not content capacity, is what is missing. 2. Build one honest holdout group, so personalization has to prove itself. 3. Point the capability we already have at the customers we already own, starting with onboarding, dormant balances, and the people who left. 💯 𝐓𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠. 📌 Download this report for free: tinyurl.com/yzkhh275

The most dangerous threat to a financial institution is not a sudden mass exodus of customers. It is the slow, silent erosion of primary relationship status. When an institution offers products designed in the 1980s, charges higher fees, and delivers slow, impersonal service, customers eventually adapt. They keep their old checking account open for legacy bills, but they reach for a digital-first competitor when they need a new loan, a credit card, or an investment account. Your institution still sees an open account on paper, but the customer's financial life has moved elsewhere. ❓ How does your bank or credit union determine whether an account holder still considers you their primary financial partner?

Ask a banker how the experience is going and you get a number. Ask a customer and you get a feeling. That mismatch is the thing I keep running into. We describe our products in the technical language we built them in. Customers never describe them that way. They tell you how it felt. Easy. Frustrating. Stressful. Helpful. Banks often measure efficiency operationally. Customers measure it emotionally. What closes that distance is almost never one bold move. It is a run of unremarkable decisions, none of which would carry a board slide on its own, that together change what banking with you feels like every day. One institution I looked at has built enormous growth on exactly that gap. And the moment customers trusted it with their paycheck, the economics of the relationship changed completely. 💡 Here is the part worth sitting with. No operational metric will tell you how your bank feels to bank with. Your customers already know, and they are telling each other either way. 𝐒𝐨 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠?

Traditional financial institutions have historically organized their operations around isolated banking products. But as Fidel Vargas, CIO of @Bancolombia, explained on this episode, customer needs have evolved beyond legacy product silos, requiring banks to transform into a connected ecosystem of specialized value propositions. Instead of trying to force every digital-first customer into a traditional branch checking account, Bancolombia built targeted brands like Nequi for digital banking and financial inclusion, Wompi for digital commerce and payments, and Wenia as a gateway for digital assets. These specialized businesses share core capabilities while catering to distinct customer behaviors. ❓ How is your institution restructuring its digital roadmap to transition from isolated products into a comprehensive lifestyle ecosystem? Drop your perspective in the comments. 📌 Watch the this episode of Banking Transformed: youtu.be/pDzZ5LWAbfM

The person sitting across from your customer this morning may be flying blind. Your systems already know that customer's deposits have declined three months in a row. Your employee may not. She owns the relationship and she is measured on whether it grows. MIT surveyed more than 300 senior executives and found only 28% of employees regularly draw on the data assets their organizations have already built. The rest sits in silos. We have good reasons for access controls. Customer information has to be protected. But somewhere along the way, least privilege became least insight. There is an important distinction between making data available and making a decision possible. Hand a banker a dashboard with 40 fields and you have asked her to become an analyst. What she needs is a sentence: deposits down three months, similar businesses showed this pattern before moving their operating account, here is the call to make today. And the authority to make it. Give an employee an insight but no ability to act and you have created a better-informed spectator. 💡 We measure what goes wrong when an employee sees what they should not. We barely measure what goes wrong when they never see what they need. 📌 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐥𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐰: thefinancialbrand.com/news/c…

In this latest Digital Banking Report, brought to you in collaboration with @Vericast, a striking pattern emerges: in November 2023, research told the industry that data infrastructure was its largest challenge, and that marketing and data analytics were its largest planned investments. The diagnosis was correct and widely shared. Three years later, fragmented data remains at the top of the barrier list. The data budget has fallen to 20%, and not one institution in our 2026 State of Financial Marketing research describes its customer data as real-time and AI-ready. Three years of accurate diagnosis have produced almost no change in the foundation. The cost of repeating that cycle is not theoretical. The competitors named in this research take one behavior at a time, and 56% of first-place threats are already non-traditional. Every payment that moves is a signal that stops arriving, so the personalization program that finally gets built will have less to work with than it would today. Three moves would change most of the charts in this report, and none of them requires a new strategy. Name one person accountable for the customer record. Move a visible share of the generative AI increase into the data foundation. Hold back 10% of the audience in the next campaign and report the difference. None of this is comfortable. The 2023 comparison proves that the years pass either way. 💡 Start with one thing, and let the next one be easier because the first one is done. 📌 Get your free copy of this report now: tinyurl.com/3xrjuzv8

Too many banking executives treat stability and transformation as opposing forces, believing that protecting core operations means slowing down innovation. On this episode of Banking Transformed, Fidel Vargas explains why a 150-year-old institution must view them as mutually dependent. You need stability in order to transform successfully, and you need continuous transformation in order to remain resilient against modern competitors like Nubank, Mercado Pago, and global fintechs. 💡 @Bancolombia proves that traditional banks can modernize legacy systems, bring core IT talent in-house, and deploy generative AI to cut contact center budgets by over 20 percent without risking stability. ❓ How is your leadership team balancing day-to-day operational resilience with aggressive digital transformation? Share your take in the comments section. ❗Special thanks to @Finacle and Qorus for making this conversation possible as part of our ongoing work on innovation in retail banking. 📌 Watch this episode on the Banking Transformed Podcast channel: youtu.be/pDzZ5LWAbfM

If your organization is treating AI implementation like a standard IT project with a clear end date, you are already falling behind. The tools, algorithms, and capabilities are changing every quarter, sometimes every week. There is no finish line in modern financial marketing. Simply adopting AI is no longer the goal, because access to these tools has become table stakes across the industry. The real advantage belongs to the leadership teams that refuse to mail it in. 💡 Winning requires taking the same generative technology available to every competitor on the block and continuously refining how you deploy it to serve your account holders. ❓ Is your leadership team viewing AI as a project to finish or as an ongoing, evolving discipline?

The hardest part about building a lasting financial habit is maintaining consistency over time. When I tested automated transfers on Acorns a few years back, I was trying to see if micro-contributions were truly effective. When I eventually logged back in, the accumulated balance proved that automation is the ultimate growth engine for consumer savings. What struck me most was the contrast between that experience and my primary bank relationships. While traditional banks publish articles telling customers to save more, third-party apps build frictionless systems that actually do the work for them. Consumers already know they need a financial safety net for the future. What they lack is an ecosystem that makes saving as passive and painless as possible. 💡 When financial institutions focus on building supportive systems rather than delivering lectures, customer loyalty follows. ❓ What is the single biggest operational barrier preventing banks and credit unions from building automated, set-and-forget savings tools into their digital platforms? Let me know in the comments below.

Banks and credit unions routinely measure efficiency through internal operational metrics, but customers measure efficiency emotionally based on how effortless and empathetic the experience feels.  Traditional institutions often protect legacy revenue streams like overdraft fees and complex account minimums, defending policies that create deep customer frustration. Meanwhile, digital-first competitors focus entirely on eliminating pain points and delivering instant gratification.  💡 When customers feel understood and supported, trust builds rapidly, leading straight to direct deposit primacy.  ❓ Where is your leadership team prioritizing emotional ease over internal operational convenience in your digital channels? 📌 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: youtu.be/2i02g_UHOaI

When small business owners have a question about running their business, 48% call another business owner. Not their bank. That figure is from Huntington's 2026 Beyond Business Report, with the research conducted by Barlow Research. It should make us uncomfortable. Owners need advice, connections and perspective from people who run businesses like theirs. Banks already have something other providers cannot easily replicate: a portfolio full of customers facing the same challenges. The problem is not that the bank lacks information. It is what the bank does with it. Even a capable banker cannot see everything the institution knows, because the insight sits scattered across checking accounts, business accounts, specialists and separate systems. Imagine changing that. Before the quarterly call, the banker gets a briefing: here are other businesses in the portfolio that look like yours, here is what owners at this stage tend to struggle with, here is a question worth asking. Then ask permission to make the introduction. Nothing happens until both sides agree. A rate can be matched. A network built around shared experience becomes more valuable as it grows. Every owner who joins makes the institution more useful to the ones already there. 📌 Read the full article on The Financial Brand: thefinancialbrand.com/news/b…

We’ve ranked balance sheet results above the relationships that create them. In our new Digital Banking Report with @Vericast, 55% of marketers say deposit growth is their top priority, while primary relationship conversion sits at just 24%. Deposits bought at a rate leave when the rate does. Primary relationships survive rate cycles. 💡 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐈 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭: put a primacy measure (direct deposit, debit usage) on your scorecard next to balances. 📌 Download your free copy of the report here: tinyurl.com/2ptvar6s

9% of financial marketers are very confident in their return on marketing investment. Four percent are very confident in customer lifetime value, and 43% do not measure it at all. Share of wallet and primary financial institution conversion both run on lifetime value, so two of the business outcomes marketing is accountable for are being pursued without the number that would indicate whether they are working. We are managing relationship depth with acquisition math. The consequential row is incremental lift from personalization compared with a non-personalized control. Fifty-two percent do not measure it, and 5% are very confident in what they do measure. Personalization is being funded, staffed, and reported across this industry without a control group. That single absence is what allows every other gap in our 2026 State of Financial Marketing research to persist, because nothing in the current dashboard would alert an executive team that personalization stopped at targeting. Where I would start: hold back 10% of the audience for the next campaign and report the difference. It is uncomfortable to intentionally leave revenue on the table, and it is the cheapest insurance a marketing budget can buy. 💡 Every campaign that goes out without one is more spending we cannot defend when someone finally asks. 📌 Special thanks to our issue sponsor, @Vericast, for supporting this research and partnering with us to bring these insights to the industry. 📌 Download your free copy: tinyurl.com/nhawxpb9

No single technology provider can be the best at everything, which makes an institution's underlying architectural philosophy more important than ever.  On this episode of Banking Transformed, I sat down with Greg Adelson, President and CEO of @JH_Fintech, to discuss why open ecosystems are essential for community bank and credit union survival. A truly open platform philosophy empowers smaller institutions to curate a best-of-breed strategy rather than being locked into a rigid best-of-suite bundle. With over 1,100 fintechs integrated into their ecosystem, Jack Henry proves that collaboration and open APIs give regional institutions the flexibility to deploy what works best for their members.  💡 When the entire industry works together to protect community banking, open connectivity is the rising tide that lifts all boats. ❓ How does your institution evaluate whether your core provider's architectural philosophy supports true open integration? 📌 This episode is available on the Banking Transformed Podcast channel on YouTube. Watch it here: youtu.be/XGHPrJSWVAY

Community banks and credit unions face relentless competitive pressure, losing market share not only to large Tier 1 institutions in their local markets but also to agile fintechs.  On this episode, I sat down with Greg Adelson, President and CEO of @JH_Fintech, to discuss how technology partners are working to level the playing field. Technology providers carry the responsibility of delivering new-age innovation and core improvements that allow smaller institutions to compete effectively. Yet, while technology vendors provide the engine, the true battleground has shifted toward execution speed.  💡 Having access to advanced tools matters little if an organization takes months or years to deploy them.  ❓ How does your leadership team evaluate whether your execution speed matches the pace of market change? 📌 𝐂𝐡𝐞𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞: youtu.be/XGHPrJSWVAY